Peggy Whitson, record-breaking 'American space ninja...Whitson was greeted with flowers, a pair of sunglasses and a medical team. All three arriving on the capsule, Whitson, fellow top-ten endurance astronaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer, were carried from the capsule in chairs because they were no longer used to Earth's gravity. Because of Hurricane Harvey, which flooded the Johnson Space Ce...

Sun's mood swings not so strange after all, say scie...The Sun has long been known to go through eleven-year cycles of high and low activity, including sunspots, which Strugarek likened to solar volcanoes. As the magnetic disruption from a sunspot approaches Earth, it can intensify the Aurora Borealis and Australis but it also dings the performance of satellites and power grids. During these periods, the sun's mag...

Curiosity Rover analysis suggests chemically complex...Analysis shows the chemical index of alteration fluctuated over time in a way that suggested the lake varied between hot, wet periods and colder, drier periods. The shallow water would have been rich in oxidants brought in from the atmosphere and groundwater, and the deeper water would have been oxidant poor. Phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, indi...

Simulations show planet orbiting Proxima Centauri co...The University of Exeter's lead exoplanet modeller, Dr. Nathan Mayne, in remarks to Wired, said, "If, and it is a huge if, the composition of the atmosphere was Earth-like then we showed the planet could indeed support temperatures which would allow liquid water on the surface". In another statement, he emphasized researchers could also "exploit this to hopefu...

President Trump tells NASA to aim for MarsOn Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill authorizing US$19.5 billion in funding for the 2018 fiscal year to go to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and specifically naming the exploration of Mars as one of the agency's goals. According to Senator Ted Cruz, NASA has not been the recipient of this kind of authorization bill for...

Former NASA astronaut Eugene Cernan dies aged 82Eugene Cernan, former NASA astronaut and the most recent human to walk on the Moon, died on Monday aged 82, according to a NASA statement. Cernan, who commanded the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon in 1972, was in Houston, Texas, at the time of his death.
Cernan, who was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 14, 1934, earned engineering degrees from Purdue Univers...

Twelve-year journey of Rosetta ends; spacecraft cras...On Friday, European Space Agency's (ESA) spacecraft Rosetta ended its mission, crashing into Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta is the first spacecraft to orbit a comet; it traveled in space for twelve years and about eight billion kilometres (about five billion miles).
3-D model of Rosetta. The actual Rosetta is black.
Image: IanShaz...

Final panel added to China's FAST radio telescopeOn Sunday China announced the final panel attached to its telescope named Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). This piece marks the end of a five-year-long US$180 million (CNY¥1.2 billion) construction project.
FAST comprises about 4,500 panels and spans a diameter of 500 meters (about 1640 feet). The telescope is part of a series of ventur...

NASA's Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter orbitYesterday, NASA announced their spacecraft Juno has reached Jupiter orbit. It was launched almost five years ago to investigate the largest planet of the Solar System, especially its past.
Juno approaching Jupiter; simulation.
Image: NASA.
Charles Bolden, NASA administrator, said, "Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add ...

NASA releases first topographical map of MercuryOn Friday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released the first ever global digital elevation model (DEM) of Mercury.
The DEM was created using data gathered by NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, including over 100,000 photographs, and shows a variety of Mercury's topographical...

NASA releases complete image of Pluto's crescentOn Thursday, NASA released the first complete picture of Pluto's crescent from the New Horizons probe. The probe captured the image with its Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14, fifteen minutes after closest approach to the planet.
After nine years' journey, New Horizons made closest approach to Pluto on July 14 and released the first co...

After Mars, NASA announces water ice on PlutoNASA released yesterday the first coloured pictures of Pluto's blue atmosphere and water ice on the surface taken by the space probe New Horizons.
NASA said the haze particles may be grey or red in colour, but the scattering of light producing blue colour indicates the size of the particles. Smaller particles results in the scattering of the blue light. Scien...

NASA announces water on MarsOn Monday, NASA announced that signs of liquid water have been found on Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft found evidence of the liquid on the Martian surface, in long dark spots on the Red Planet thought to be formed because of water flow.
In a news conference, NASA's planetary science director, Jim Green said, "We now know Mars was once a plan...

NASA's New Horizons space probe performs first close...On Tuesday, NASA's space probe New Horizons reached near Pluto. It was launched about nine-and-a-half years ago on January 19, 2006 to collect data about the dwarf planet, amongst other targets. With its flyby on Tuesday it became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto closely.
NASA collected data regarding the geology of the planet. The space probe had seven ...

Scientists find ancient solar system in Milky Way ga...They said the system dates roughly to the formation of the Milky Way galaxy. They found the planets orbiting around Kepler-444, about 117 light years from Earth. Researchers investigated Kepler-444 with NASA's Kepler telescope using a method called asteroseismology.
Scientists explain they studied the star and noticed planets passing in front of it because ...

SpaceX launches fifth resupply rocket to Internation...The launch was postponed from Tuesday because of a technical issue on the second stage of the rocket. The shipment includes replacements for cargo aboard the spaceship Cygnus, destroyed during a failed launch in October. Cygnus belonged to the rival Orbital Sciences Corporation.
SpaceX tried unsuccessfully to land the Falcon 9 delivery rocket for reuse. The r...

Researchers say light signal from space suggests mer...On Wednesday, George Djorgovski and collaborators reported in the journal Nature on an unusual light signal they say suggests two supermassive black holes are merging, a phenomenon never seen before, though theorized.
The discovery could clarify how black holes merge and galaxies evolve, and could also provide a better understanding of the so-called "final ...